


Sweet Necrosis

by aijouu



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst and Tragedy, M/M, Sad and Beautiful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:35:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26048128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aijouu/pseuds/aijouu
Summary: Just an angsty lil' oneshot inspired by isayama's high school fake preview, requested by PaleBlueStone! ♡
Relationships: Levi/Erwin Smith
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	Sweet Necrosis

I remember reading somewhere that we, as humans, die twice. That when we first die, initially we are buried six feet below the dirt or maybe burned to ashes and mourned but no one ever mentioned the second death that takes place when people stop remembering you, when people start to forget about you, and when people stop saying your name to a point where you cease to exist.

I remembered when it all happened.

It was my third year of high school. I was on my way to Literature class after having come back from lunch but, heading down the English wing, I heard screaming, and it didn’t sound anything like your usual teenage girl screaming because some guy who liked her took her pencil case and ran with it. This scream sounded horrified, petrified, terrified and if it weren’t for the blood spatter on the classroom door, or the flickering lights, or the inhuman screech that one of my former classmates let out, I wouldn’t have known that something had gone terribly wrong, and I would’ve died that day too, only, I was saved. It happened quickly, the same way it was portrayed in the movies; the yelling, the shouting, the terror, the fear, the panic, bleeding, death, chaos and disorganization, and looking back to that day, I should’ve died.  Someone had said my name. Someone had said my name and when I didn’t respond as a reaction from pure shock, I felt my body lift, and be carried elsewhere. I heard doors slamming. I heard people growling. I heard bones breaking and flesh being torn off of bodies and people being torn limb from limb as their vocal cords stretched and ripped and then suddenly, it all stopped. I was in a car, but I wasn’t alone. There were voices around me, voices of several people including Eren, Mike, Petra, Armin, and a few others I still can’t properly place to this day but those same voices were arguing.

The voices couldn’t find someone, couldn’t find Connie, said that Connie was in the bathroom and that same bathroom was full of ‘those things’. The voices didn’t know what those things were. The voices said that they ate Connie alive, that Annie tried to fight them off but didn’t succeed, that Hitch tried her best to get away and disappeared and that it was no use to go back in again and search for people. The voices said they should call the police but, another said that those things were attracted to sound and that if they called the police, their sirens would cause all of them to swarm. The voices said they were going to call their parents but then, my head was empty, and it went silent before a single voice uttered the words:

“You’re bleeding..”

Another voice said the same thing, another voice let out a cry, and then someone clarified why someone was bleeding before announcing that someone within the car had been bit, and from then on, there was never another quiet moment.

I never saw or recognized a face. The engine started and the car began to drive but the voices continued. They asked what happened and the voice said he didn’t even feel it. They asked if he felt different and he said he felt fine. They asked what happened to a person once they got bit as if he knew and instead of responding directly he gave directions to his home, and we made it there within ten minutes and we all rushed inside. His parents weren’t home, and they were said to be at work but as we all piled in and locked all doors and shut all windows before aiding him in washing and cleansing his wound and dousing it in a mixture of alcohol and hydrogen peroxide but then, one of us turned on the television, and then, everything became very clear, very fast, and so did reality.

A nearby laboratory and experimental facility that had apparently been running tests on the human brain in a quest to find a cure for brain cancer had gone rogue. Not having received many scientific donations, they began running those same tests on deceased humans without consent, and somehow, those who were once pronounced dead appeared alive but, they weren’t living. It didn’t take long for the CDC to interrupt their broadcast, and rather than explain what was going on, they told us what to do so they could handle this ‘contagion’ and encouraged everyone to remain indoors in a temporary quarantine, and we were given instructions. 

Turn off all lights.

Lock and barricade all doors and windows.

Do not contact any local police or emergency stations.

Refrain from leaving your residence at all times.

Stay away from anyone showing signs of infection, or someone who has been exposed or in close contact with someone else with infection.

And in that moment, after hearing those words, the same people who were once helping the man who had a deep bite mark on the back of his forearm stopped aiding him, and stared instead. No one moved a muscle. No one said a thing or breathed a single word but it was obvious they all had the same thing on their mind, and I don’t know why, but, I felt like I wanted to throw up. They all looked at him as if he knew better than anyone what was going on but then, he grabbed a piece of paper, and a pencil, and began scribbling. It was still quiet, if not quieter. Our eyes never left him and as he leaked all over the counter and stained the very page he wrote on, he kept writing, and he did for a few minutes but as soon as he stopped, he stood up straight, and looked at us all, and with a heavy, but, whispered, unstill voice, he spoke to us.

“It’s a checklist,” he said, “It’s a checklist of all the symptoms, and if I have all of them, then—”

He was stopped, someone talked over him and said he didn’t have any symptoms and wouldn’t have any symptoms but the man begged to differ. He told us that we were all his friends, and the last thing he’d want to do what put us in danger and he went on to write down his bank account information should we need money, as well as the various passcodes to access the cameras around his property, and he told us where everything was around his home and said that he’d be drinking only water for the time being since there was a chance that he wasn’t healthy, and he didn't want to waste food on himself, and looking back to that moment today, and looking back at the man who saved me, I think he knew that he was going to die but, he didn’t tell us not because he didn’t want us to know but, he didn’t tell us because he didn’t want us to be more afraid than we already were.

His home had three bathrooms, and none of us forced him to occupy one of them, he did it himself. I still wasn’t able to fully grasp what was happening and what was going on but, when I saw the skin around his wound begin to peel back, and ooze pus, it all set in.

And from that day, I watched him rot.

We were in the middle of June and yet, he started to shiver. He’d wrapped his wound but the skin beneath it turned a pale gray and I knew it was festering. His nose ran, he began to cough up his own blood and fluids, but, he always said he was okay. He was okay but, he needed a blanket. He was okay but, he needed a fan because he was too hot. He was okay but he said his body was on fire and it felt like ants were crawling all over him from how itchy he was and then, the vomiting started. He never ate food to begin with so, I never knew what his body was refusing but, it didn’t take long for his eyes to cloud, and his skin to dim, and the hint of life in his eyes to fade away. I would catch him talking to people that weren’t really in the room, laughing at jokes that weren’t said, screaming and crying in an obvious delirium that made him think that he’d lost his right arm and that his heart had been ripped out his chest and was laying on the floor or that his organs were spilling out of him and after his hysteria, his veins turned purple, his nails flaked off of his hands and feet, his body lost a significant amount of mass and volume but it wasn’t until I noticed that his eyes had been drained of color did I realize that he wasn’t there, and that he wasn't one of us, anymore.

I never told anyone. 

I crossed everything off on that checklist but I never said a thing. I just stopped checking on him whenever it was my duty to do so and marking today, he’d been locked in that bathroom for three years, groaning, banging on the shower door, decomposing, falling apart, decaying before our very eyes and it was impossible to think that the creature who now occupied the bathroom was once our friend. Our friend who hung out with us, and took us to movies, and went rollerskating with, went bowling with, smiled and laughed and made jokes with.

_ My _ , friend, who I didn’t want to be friends with anymore.

We spent most of our time in group settings, with Petra, and Mike, the whole crew and some more but, there were times when it was just me and him, or him and I. We talked a lot, and at first glance, it wouldn’t be able to tell considering how much we contrast but, I was the first person he came out to, before his own parents. He confided in me, for some reason I still don't know. Told me his dad wouldn’t like the idea, told me his mom would be upset that he wouldn’t bring her any children, laughed to himself when he told me his parents would probably never look at him the same and it really was funny because, we were just teenagers, discovering ourselves, finding ourselves, figuring out who we are and who we wanted to be and he never got the chance to even begin the search.  He lit something in me, that man. A hope, a maybe, a belief that life is what you make it, and if that was true, I could have anything and everything I wanted and more, and I should fight for it. I have, or, had, very strict parents, very strict immigrant parents that wanted me to be absolutely perfect so that I never had ‘go through the things they had to’, and in retrospect, it made sense, however, life isn’t life without the struggle, without the suffering, without the sadness, loss, and difficultly, and that was the only logical reason I could tell myself as I aimed my pistol between his eyes.

I sat in the bathroom, and we were separated. He was locked in the shower with the help of a metal chain. I could see him and he could see me and as he clawed at the glass, I cocked the gun. I took a deep, unsteady breath, and it stunk. The smell was unbearable. There wasn't a single word in my vocabulary that I could use to describe the odor of deteriorating human flesh and muscle but, the smell wasn’t what was making my eyes shed tears. What was making my stomach turn and my knees wobble and my eyes sting was that I let the man who meant so much to me turn into the monster I looked at now. That the flies and maggots that ate at him and consumed him and laid their eggs within the folds of his ear was my doing. It was  _ all _ , my doing. If he hadn’t come back for me, if he’d been selfish, if he thought his life meant more than mine, he wouldn’t be here, he wouldn’t be this, he wouldn’t be dead and I would but, I wouldn't mind that.

I offered to do this.  Petra couldn’t do this. I couldn’t let Mike do this. I wouldn’t Armin touch a gun and if I let Eren do this it would ruin him and so it had to be me, I had to do this. I knew him better than anyone else did and though I should’ve pulled the trigger half an hour ago, and I still couldn't.

We’ve all had those conversations while out with friends. Conversations asking if someone would take a bullet for someone else, sacrifice their life for the sake of theirs, and when Petra asked our circle, he said yes, and I didn’t believe him until I watched him turn. He saved my life that day when he could’ve left without me and in the process of carrying me out of the building, he was bit. I didn’t have a chance to thank him. I didn’t have a chance to ask him why. I didn’t have a chance to ask the others why he was the one to go in for me alone and I didn’t have the chance to admit to him how I really felt and felt about him and I will never have the chance to see his smile, to hear his laugh, or to feel his warmth.

I never had the chance to love him.

I liked him and he liked me and it was mutually known that we had a thing for each other but, it was our little secret, and we liked it that way. Maybe it was because we were men. Maybe it was because I was the only person who knew he was gay and he was the only person who knew I was gay or maybe it was because what we really wanted was one another, and we wanted to take our time, and we didn’t want to mess up only, this time, I can’t read his eyes anymore, because they’re empty. I don’t know what he’s thinking. I don’t know what he wants to say. I don’t know if he’s in heaven or hell or stuck somewhere in between but I know it isn’t fair to keep him like this, and just like he said, that the last thing he’d want to do was put his friends in danger but I know something that nobody else knows, and it’s that he would never want to hurt me.

He would never want to hurt me. He would never want to harm me. He would only want to see me safe, and happy, and  _ alive _ , and he was a man of his word and if could do all those things for me, I could do this one thing for him. I wanted him to rest. I wanted him to sleep. I didn’t want to see him like this anymore and I didn’t want to reminded of who he used to be and once was and I didn’t want to remember the times we shared that would never come back and would only haunt me and my memories and my heart and so with clamped eyes and sweaty palms and an erratic heartbeat, I shot him.

The glass shattered. The bullet went through the shower wall, and as the glass hit the tile flooring, I don’t think I will ever forget the sound of his body falling onto the floor, or the wail that left my body after. 

I wanted him. I wanted him to be here. I wanted him to hold me. I wanted him to talk to me. I wanted to stay up all night on the phone with him one more time. I wanted to count stars with him, and trace constellations with our fingers. I wanted to tell him all of my secrets and for him to tell me his and I wanted to talk about _our_ future, not just mine, and not just his. I needed him here and especially now and somehow differentiating the man who I fell in love with from the non-living thing that now bled on the bathroom floor became impossible. It had been him the whole time. The man I met freshmen year. The man who I swore I hated at first. The man who made fun of me over my height but then confessed that it was his favorite thing about me. The man who made me believe that my life was my own and that I was in charge of it. The man that saved me from that building. The man who gave away his own life and valued mine over his. The man who loved me, but didn’t have the time to tell me or prove it to me or build something with me; he was gone, now.

His name was Erwin Smith, and I will not let him die a second time.


End file.
